Page 35 of Music of the Ocean

“Gods above, listen to me. They won’t stop looking. The Federation of Allied Planets, of which Earth is a part, will not stop looking. Not to mention, I have friends on that ship who’ll be freaked out about how I left. Because how I left was not normal or allowed!”

Indigo shrugged as a seam opened to reveal a screen of living coral, its surface shuddering and spitting out a holomap in crisp, electric blue. The image hung suspended in the water, vibrating with the urgency of the siren. A dot pulsed, traced by a dotted line that tracked the probe’s descent.

Saxby stared, transfixed, as the simulation ran. Atmospheric entry, deceleration, splashdown. The probe cut through the upper layers, a hot spear, trailing a wake of boiling bubbles.

Indigo’s eyes narrowed. He exhaled and the glow from his bioluminescent markings grew sharper, more defined. On the screen, the probe continued downward. Indigo’s tentacles flexed as the image zoomed in, showing the probe’s slow tumble as it righted itself.

Indigo didn’t look away from the display. He reached up, and with a flick of his tentacle, adjusted the projection, which was now showing a three-dimensional cutaway of the probe’s interior.

The water around the probe was already changing color, the sensors flickering. Something in the ocean was reacting. Indigo closed his eyes, and the screen pulsed.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the probe’s systems failed, one by one. First, the thermal regulation, then the comms, then the power core. It all happened in under thirty seconds standard, which was why Saxby’s ship had never been able to get any readings.

The feed cut out, and then it was replaced by a single, perfect image of the probe, resting on the sea floor, already half embedded in a rapidly expanding bloom of iridescent blue algae.

Within seconds, the casing corroded, the self-destruct never even triggering. It was just digested. Erased. Gone. Saxby shuddered. He got it now. There was no way to beat this planet. Not with a probe, maybe not even with a fleet.

He wondered what Captain Mollen would do. Would he send more probes? Would this become an obsession? Find the missing man, solve the anomaly, explain why every piece of hardware sent into the deep vanished.

Indigo turned to him. “They will send more. But it will not work.”

Saxby wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly freezing despite the warm currents. “What if they send a team? What happens if someone else comes down here?”

“They will be claimed, as you were. Or they will be stopped.”

Indigo said it without force. No hiss of threat, no display of aggression—just the same unyielding composure he’d worn since the moment they’d met. But Saxby heard the certainty underneath and that was the most terrifying part of all.

There was no loophole, no clever human trick to outwit the alien logic of this place. The planet would simply do what it’d always done—adapt, assimilate, defend.

Even if it meant turning every outsider into a mutant swimming in the endless blue. The thought twisted in Saxby’s gut. Indigo’s certainty wasn’t the worst of it. It was the realization that if his old crew sent a rescue team, they’d be collected like he’d been before they even knew what hit them.

He looked at Indigo and tried to read something behind those luminous eyes. Was there regret? Sympathy? He wondered if it was even possible for Indigo to understand what it was to lose not just a home, but an entire way of believing in the universe.

The silence stretched between them, amplified by the echo of that quiet, absolute voice. Saxby pressed his forehead against the cool, pulsing wall, trying to slow his breath, and found himself wishing for the comfort of anger, the illusion that something could be fought and won.

But even that was denied him here. In the depths, there were no sides left, no right or wrong, just the relentless patience of the world itself.

“This world does not yield.”

Saxby stared at the screen and watched as the last bits of the probe were consumed by the blue.

“They won’t stop,” Saxby whispered. Then, he looked at Indigo. “Somehow, and I have no idea how, you were able to disable that probe. You,” Saxby stressed.

“Yes. I have told you before I am tied to this planet. I am its caretaker and its protector.”

“And you told me the city is basically the capital city of the planet, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a hub where operators monitor, analyze, and manage critical operations? A kind of nerve center that gathers real-time data to help—I don’t know—teams coordinate resources, make rapid decisions, and respond to emergencies?”

Indigo grinned at Saxby.

“Holy mother of the gods, it’s all you, isn’t it? You’re the fucking command center of this planet, aren’t you?”

“Basically, yes,” Indigo replied, and his bioluminescence flickered with something that almost looked like pride.

Full understanding hit Saxby all at once. The planet’s life force had claimed Indigo, had pressed and reconfigured that mind and body into something so thoroughly other, and it had also given him the reins to the entire gods-be-damned biome.